Non-technical users of mobile devices and other computing devices with highly graphical interaction do not know or do not understand how to control how applications interact with other applications or resources. An app (i.e., application) being installed on a mobile device or other computing device may ask the user for permission to access another app or resource at the time of the first launch of the app. Unless the user knows how to change the access permissions using current techniques based on lists of access rights or text rules indicating all of the access rights of the app, the app will maintain its access to the other app or resource subsequent to the first launch of the app. The non-technical user often finds the current list or text rule-based access permission management techniques to be confusing.
Further, the user often installs an app, grants permissions at the time of installation, where the permissions are nested or buried under several setting options, uses the app only once, and then forgets about the app until space is needed to install another app. In the meantime, while the app remains installed but unused, the app may have been granted permission to (1) utilize cellular data, which is expensive for the user, (2) heavily use the central processing unit of the device, thereby significantly reducing battery life, or (3) access data from other apps, where the user wants that data to be unavailable to the app.
Still further, the user of the mobile device is typically concerned about a small subset of all of the access rights of an app installed on the device. For example, a user may be concerned about the battery life of the device and therefore has concern about whether an app has access to the Global Positioning System (GPS) chip, which causes a drain on the battery; whereas the same user may not be concerned about the app accessing other hardware (e.g., the Secure Digital (SD) card) of the device. As another example, a user may value privacy and thus be concerned about what type of information the device sends out to social networks. Accordingly, there is a need to provide an access control representation that is easily understood by the non-technical user.